Fission, fiction or fusion….?

Unlimited power and clean, green, CFC-free electricity. Sounds like a fermi story, but actually that reality is closer than anybody thinks.

Except for people like me, that is. Even though a student am I; a scientist I am and the future I build.

I am jabbering in Huttese about the so-called nuclear power. A lot of people are scared of this, and rightly so, it is DANGEROUS.

But in actual fact there are two kinds, the dangerous kind, and the safe kind. Mankind so far has only been playing around with the first kind, but has long been aware of the second kind. This is the kind that is completely safe.

So why don’t we use the second kind? Simple answer is, it is very difficult. Easy in principle, hard in practice. Bit like an oversexed spotty schoolboy, really.

So what stops the second kind being used? Simply put: The Engineers. No, I am not referring to the ancient soccer team who won the English FA Cup eight times in four years, but back when there were only three teams in it, sometime in the late half of last century somewhere. I am talking about that group of guys who make money out of the ideas that this group of guys come up with. The Engineers. WE are the scientists.

Nuclear Power (No 2) is so difficult that it has to generate the temperature of a star in the lab. Generating this is easy, our team do it all the time (albeit for around the fraction of time it takes Tom Cruise to change partners), but starting it and getting it going so that it does not uncontrollably stop (rather like an impotent priest) requires more energy than the mini-star puts out.

We call this bit “ignition” because it goes self-sustaining (rather like an impotent priest on Viagra).

Incidentally, both Nuclear Power types produce the “Atom Bomb”. The first is called the “fission” bomb, which causes energy by flying apart atoms, and the second, “fusion” or “hydrogen” bomb, which causes energy by “sticking together” atoms. However the second is far more powerful because it requires a “fission” bomb just to ignite it. (or, in the schoolboy’s case, to stop it).

Imagine if we could gather that energy and use it. It is not impossible, but very, very hard (no comment about schoolboys or priests).

The way each version of the Nuclear Power needs a certain knowledge of nuclear physics, so only those really interested will be looking at the follow-up to this – “Fission fact, and Fusion”.